San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
49ers, Jets both hurting in Week 2
The 49ers’ top wide receiver, top tight end, top cornerback and one of their Pro Bowl pass rushers won’t play Sunday.
Their quarterback appears wobbly, and they are facing backtoback East Coast road games on the heels of a seasonopening upset loss at home.
Why is it not time to panic? That’s easy: They’re playing the Jets.
The reigning NFC champions are facing a bit of early adversity, but they’re also facing a team with similar injury issues and a far different pedigree. The Jets haven’t had a winning season since 2015, and their season opener didn’t suggest 2020 would be the turnaround. They trailed by 18 points at halftime in a 2717 loss to the Bills.
Perhaps that’s why 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan began with the verbal equivalent of a shrug when asked about the confluence of events impacting his team.
“I’d look at it as a pretty normal situation,” Shanahan said.
The Jets, who last reached the playoffs in 2010, are in their standard situation: disarray.
They will play Sunday without their top running back, Le’Veon Bell; top wide receiver, Jamison Crowder, and rookie wideout Denzel Mims, a secondround pick, all of whom are sidelined with hamstring injuries.
That means quarterback Sam Darnold, 23, who ranked 27th in the NFL last season in passer rating, will have a group of skillposition players ranging from the aged (37yearold running back Frank
Gore) to the anonymous.
Braxton Berrios (six career receptions) will assume Crowder’s role as slot receiver and play alongside starters Breshad Perriman and Chris Hogan. Jets head coach Adam Gase acknowledged he’ll closely monitor Gore’s snap count. That means the 49ers could see plenty of backups La’Mical Perine, a rookie fourthround pick, and Kalen Ballage.
These are not players who populate fantasy teams.
“It’s about trying to figure out who we do have,” Gase said when asked whether he’d be handcuffed as a play caller. “… Just figuring out, all right, how many backs do we have? What do we have wide receiverwise? It seems like the tight ends — we’ve got enough of those guys.”
That doesn’t sound promising, especially because the Jets will face last year’s secondranked defense — and the 49ers are eager to bounce back from a substandard performance in their 2420 loss to Arizona.
The 49ers had one turnover, two sacks and allowed fourthquarter touchdown drives of 94 and 75 yards. The Cardinals gained 404 yards; the 49ers surrendered more than 400 yards only once in 2019.
The 49ers won’t have AllPro cornerback Richard Sherman (calf ), who was placed on injured reserve Wednesday. And they also won’t have defensive end Dee Ford, who was downgraded from questionable to out Saturday because of what Shanahan termed “neck spasms.”
However, the 49ers also won’t have to face an elusive quarterback such as Arizona’s Kyler Murray, who rushed for 93 yards, averaged 7 yards a carry and had an aggressive defense on its heels.
Edge rusher Nick Bosa noted Murray and Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson force defenses to “change what you do to stop what they do.” He said that won’t be an issue Sunday. Darnold averaged 1.9 yards on 33 carries last year.
“We’re playing a team that kind of allows us to play our scheme this week,” Bosa said. “And we’re excited about that.” Quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo can’t be thrilled to not have AllPro tight end George Kittle (knee) and wide receiver Deebo Samuel (foot), who combined for 142 catches and 1,855 yards last season. Wide receiver Kendrick Bourne, who had 30 catches in 2019, will be the 49ers’ only wideout or tight end who had more than 14 receptions last year.
Garoppolo is coming off a shaky seasonopening performance. He completed 8 of 17 passes for 89 yards in the second half, and he missed open receivers deep in Arizona’s territory on a final drive that ended with a fourthdown incompletion.
Garoppolo acknowledged he needs to be more decisive, and others also have offered critiques. General manager John Lynch pointed to Garoppolo “holding on to the ball” when asked about the three sacks the 49ers allowed. Former 49ers quarterback Steve Young said Garoppolo went through his progressions too quickly, not giving pass catchers a chance to shake free from defenders.
“He would go through things and it was like, ‘Hold on. Just take a deep breath. They’re going to come open,’ ” Young said on KNBR.
Young said Shanahan’s dad, Mike — Young’s offensive coordinator with the 49ers from 199294 — taught him to make his reads a bit more deliberately. Kyle Shanahan said the issue Young cited wasn’t a primary reason for Garoppolo’s uneven performance.
“There were a couple he might’ve been a little too fast on, a couple a little too slow, but that’s pretty normal,” Shanahan said. “That wasn’t everything. But there were a couple he was like that on.”